ote whether you eschew
common sherry and show an expensive partiality for that madeira at
twelve pounds a-dozen, which other men would probably only place on the
table when it could be well invested in company worthy of the sacrifice.
Who shall penetrate the human heart, and say whether a hidden pang or
gust of wrath has vibrated behind that placid countenance, if you have
been seen to drop an ink-spot on the creamy margin of the Mentelin
Virgil, or to tumble that heavy Aquinas from the ladder and dislocate
his joints? As all the world now knows, however, men assimilate to the
conditions by which they are surrounded, and we civilise our city
savages by substituting cleanness and purity for the putrescence which
naturally accumulates in great cities. So, in a noble library, the
visitor is enchained to reverence and courtesy by the genius of the
place. You cannot toss about its treasures as you would your own rough
calfs and obdurate hogskins; as soon would you be tempted to pull out
your meerschaum and punk-box in a cathedral. It is hard to say, but I
would fain believe that even Papaverius himself might have felt some
sympathetic touch from the spotless perfection around him and the noble
reliance of the owner; and that he might perhaps have restrained himself
from tearing out the most petted rarities, as a wolf would tear a fat
lamb from the fold.

Such, then, are some "cases" discussed in a sort of clinical lecture. It
will be seen that they have differing symptoms--some mild and genial,
others ferocious and dangerous. Before passing to another and the last
case, I propose to say a word or two on some of the minor specialties
which characterise the pursuit in its less amiable or dignified form. It
is, for instance, liable to be accompanied by an affection, known also
to the agricultural world as affecting the wheat crop, and called "the
smut." Fortunately this is less prevalent among us than the French, who
have a name for the class of books affected by this school of collectors
in the _Bibliotheque bleue_. There is a sad story connected with this
peculiar frailty. A great and high-minded scholar of the seventeenth
century had a savage trick played on him by some mad wags, who collected
a quantity of the brutalities of which Latin literature affords an
endless supply, and published them in his name. He is said not long to
have survived this practical joke; and one does not wonder at his
sinking before such a prospect,